Ebay embattled: Auction mode backward access is falling

Our reporter Yu Yue ebay homepage will be the first major revision in nearly 4 years!　　At the beginning of November, such a message stimulated the nerves of buyers and sellers in the field of E-commerce. People familiar with ebay know that since the replacement of the chief executive of ebay more than two years ago, the homepage revision of its website has occurred. But what is the result? Users have a lot of complaints, the auction business continues to slide. As a result, the industry is waiting to see if the so-called major revision will save the time and rescue ebay's auction business.　　If this revision is still not effective, where will ebay go?　　The shuttle bus that did not catch up with the Times is a major revision, and it is easy to recall the social networking site MySpace and social news site Digg, which posted the same revisions 3 months ago. MySpace was originally the "one Brother" of social networking sites. At its peak in 2006, it "intercepted" 4.5% of all web traffic in the United States. However, 30 years Hedong, 30 years of Hexi. Today, MySpace is not only being left behind by Facebook, it is also plagued by rumours that it will be sold by its old club, News Corp. In August this year, MySpace made a major makeover to its homepage and its related functions by recreating its brilliance and emulating its Facebook style. In the same month, Digg, which had been hit by investors after a rush of traffic, announced the latest version of V4. One of the reasons for MySpace and Digg to decline is because of the lack of product innovation and the pace of the times. In order to get out of the predicament, they are to their products, that is, the site of the revision.　　Now, ebay has staged the same scene again. ebay, founded in September 1995, started out as a Consumer-to-consumer auction platform. At first, people put all sorts of strange things on ebay for auction. In an era when the Internet is not yet popular, this form has sparked interest in attracting a loyal group of early adopters to ebay.　　The herd effect has also made ebay's user size snowball-like. At the same time, due to the development of E-commerce industry chain is not mature, many users of the platform operators encounter inventory backlog problem, and no inventory annoyance of ebay at this time has been rapid development.　　December 2004, ebay's share price reached its highest point, becoming the first Internet company to market capitalisation. In the current era of rapid development, the user's needs change rapidly. More and more users start online shopping, E-commerce industry chain is maturing, the auction of this inefficient way of online shopping is gradually marginalized. Many users are complaining that bidding on ebay is too cumbersome to send emails back and forth, and many times they can't buy anything at the right price. "The Internet has developed dramatically in recent years and buyers have become accustomed to streamlining and efficient shopping processes," Donahoe, the current CEO of ebay. This shopping experience pays great attention to speed, convenience and reliability. "Not only is the auction model behind, ebay's collectFee model is also the reason many sellers leave. Auction on ebay, sellers need to pay for each auction information publishing fee, the transaction after the successful payment of the closing fee.　　In addition, ebay has a large number of additional costs, such as value-added display fees (multiple photos and more charges). Marian Volc, an analyst at the Susquehanna Consortium, said the charging model was outdated: "ebay's business model is inconsistent with the performance-based pay model that is commonly used in the search economy." "The typical example of a pay-for-performance model cited by Marian Volc is Google. Users use Google's keyword business, if not click, the seller does not have to pay.　　In this competitive situation, some sellers began to leave ebay, to build their own independent web site, and through the purchase of Google's keyword products to sell goods. ebay, which did not catch the time shuttle, gave up the title of the Internet company with the first market capitalisation and the position of Big Brother. In February 2005, Google replaced ebay as the first Internet company to market capitalisation. In December 2007, Amazon hit 59.624 million times, the first time over ebay.　　Today, ebay's share price has fallen by more than 80% compared with the highest point.　　March 31, 2008, the chief executive of Walt Whitman, who led ebay through 10 years, officially resigned, ebay's core business, Donahoe, head of the auction and E-commerce division, took over the burden and embarked on a sweeping overhaul.　　Self-help measures have been very little for nearly two years, ebay launched a series of reform policies aimed at the Web site, which is a bit dazzling, one of the big move is to change the charging mode. In early 2008, ebay announced different cost-cutting strategies in different markets. For example, in the United States market, the cost of goods information is falling 25%~50%, but the fee is increased. Clearly, the move lowers the risk for sellers. In addition, ebay also canceled the U.S. market photo display fee, hoping to stimulate the seller to add pictures on the site enthusiasm, to attract more buyers.　　After that, ebay has repeatedly lowered the cost of merchandise information or to engage in preferential activities, in disguise to reduce various fees to attract sellers. ebay, while trying to please the sellers, naturally will not forget the buyers.　　It first updated the evaluation system, so that sellers can not give the buyer a bad rating, after the introduction of a series of preferential policies to attract sellers to implement free shipping. However, for ebay's kindness, not many people are buying it. In order to avoid the freight transport strategy as an example, the beginning did attract a lot of buyers eyes, but ultimately let the buyer disappointed to return. "I was really excited to hear about ebay's free shipping." After logging into the site, I found that a lot of things are free shipping. "A user tells their story," I bought something, and found that the seller added the charges to other things, such as packing fees, bank charges, insurance premiums, and so on, that the actual product price was higher than before free shipping. "Not only that, because ebay has repeatedly adjustedPolicies that allow users to think that ebay is always doing "brain-work", that is, to make a change and then overthrow it. A seller said: "The original ebay to take a buyer evaluation of the measures can not be changed, the results?" Buyers do not get better after-sales service. ebay then changed its policy back to a model that could be changed. In addition, ebay's evaluation mechanism was changed back and forth. Later, do not know how many policies to change.　　The seller looked very helpless. Ebay has been very painstaking, but its auction business has not changed. The decline in Web site traffic proves one thing: ebay's self-help measures have not been successful.　　Of course, ebay did not give up on reform, so there was the opening message--ebay plan to search, product list display, and a series of major changes in the hope of narrowing the technical gap with competitors.　　The effect of ebay's revision has been questioned by many analysts because there are too many failed revisions. Real Saviour today's ebay is embattled.　　It not only suffers from the constant "defection" of website users, but also faces threats from Alibaba, Google and Amazon. This June, Alibaba acquired Vendio, an E-commerce company based in California, USA. Vendio owns more than 80,000 American shop sellers. These sellers mainly do business on EBay, Amazon and some independent online shops. In August, Alibaba acquired the Auctiva company, which provided technical services to ebay sellers.　　Google upgraded its shopping channel in November. How does ebay, embattled, and its revamped results, break the trap? "ebay's payment platform PayPal will be the first major business in the near future beyond ebay's online auction business." Donahoe the comments after the third-quarter results were released by ebay. According to the third-quarter earnings, PayPal's revenue now accounts for 37% of ebay's total revenue. Ebay has blocked cash payments and asked sellers to pay only with credit cards or PayPal, which has been strongly protested by the users, but ebay has been irrevocably pursuing the policy. The reason for this is that ebay is betting on PayPal. PayPal has been viewed by ebay as a real lifesaver.